The Director’s pick: Finders Keepers Collectors and their Stories
MoAD Director Daryl Karp picks five objects from our exhibition and tells us why these are her favourites.

The Museum of Australian Democracy acknowledges the traditional owners and custodians of country throughout Australia. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to the people, the cultures and the elders past, present and emerging.
The museum respectfully acknowledges the role that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continue to play in shaping Australia’s democracy.
xCloseMoAD Director Daryl Karp picks five objects from our exhibition and tells us why these are her favourites.
New citizens are welcomed with heart-felt messages from our visitors.
On this day ten years ago, Ngambri Elder Matilda House witnessed Kevin Rudd’s Apology to the Stolen Generations. She carried a message from a friend.
This week there’s a major anniversary in Indigenous history that not enough Australians know about. The Museum of Australian Democracy is recognising this anniversary in a new exhibition – Yes: the ongoing story of the 1967 Referendum – and asks prominent Australians how they feel about the referendum today.
Horses were a vital part of the Parliament House opening ceremonies. What did they make of all the fuss? Three photographs of Bill, the horse ridden in Canberra by the Duke of York, provide a fresh insight into the day’s events.
Hilda Abbott was a distinguished guest whose recollections reveal that behind the public performance, VIPs are only people after all.
It took determination, ingenuity and a small piece of string to get Parliament House finished in time for its grand opening in 1927.
An object now in display in our Designing Democracy gallery documents one man’s life-or-death decision on Australia’s pastoral frontier.
In 1965 Queen Elizabeth gave Sir Robert Menzies a gift so special that he had to contemplate burying it on a beach. What was it?
Jane Harris tells the story of her involvement in the anti-apartheid movement and her late brother John, a member of the African Resistance Movement (ARM) during the 1960s.
The museum’s latest exhibition, Memories of the Struggle: Australians against Apartheid, opens to the public next Wednesday 27 April when it is launched by former prime minister, Bob Hawke.
As the curtain-raiser to the 2015 Behind the Lines exhibition at the Museum of Australian Democracy, Old Parliament House, three accomplished political cartooning practitioners explained how they decide who and what to draw, and what to avoid.
In 1952, the Australian Government made a great addition to the nation’s library collection when it acquired an issue of Magna Carta that dated back to 1297.
Henry Parkes is known as Australia’s ‘Father of Federation’ as one of the leading figures in our progress to nationhood that was achieved in 1901.
With the fabrication finalised, and all the objects chosen and ready to go, it was time for the last task: installation.
In the second of a series of ‘behind the scenes’ blog posts, Campbell Rhodes shares some of the experiences and challenges of putting this exhibition together.
In the first of a series of behind the scenes blog posts, Curatorial officer Campbell Rhodes shares some of the experiences and challenges of putting this exhibition together.
You can tell a lot about someone from what they buy. Our Prime Ministers of Australia gallery now has on display a selection of Harold Holt’s bank records, kindly lent to us by the National Archives of Australia.
On 28 June 1914, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was shot and killed by a Serbian radical in Sarajevo, setting off a chain of events that plunged the world into what was the bloodiest war in recorded history.
Be Prepared. That was probably the motto of the entire population of provisional Parliament House during the countdown to the Queen’s arrival on 15 February 1954.